Optical UWB pulse generator using an N tap microwave photonic filter and phase inversion adaptable to different pulse modulation formats

We propose theoretically and experimentally demonstrate an optical architecture for flexible Ultra-Wideband pulse generation. It is based on an N-tap reconfigurable microwave photonic filter fed by a laser array by using phase inversion in a Mach-Zehnder modulator. The proposed system permits a full reconfigurability of photonic microwave filter and therefore high-order UWB pulses can be generated to successfully satisfy the FCC regulation. Moreover, the photonic UWB pulse generator is adaptable to different pulse modulation formats since the amplitude, polarity and time delay of generated pulses can be controlled with a reconfiguration time up to tens of nanoseconds. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America